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How do I choose plain text in Hotmail?

Question:

I regularly send emails to a mailing list from my Hotmail account, but
several folks on the list are upset because my mails are coming through as
"rich text" or HTML. How do I get Hotmail to send my message as plain text?

Interestingly enough, the default for Hotmail appears to be plain text. But
regardless, we'll look at where that option is hidden - and why in some cases
it's not available at all.

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Where it's hidden is easy. When you compose a new message in HotMail, click
on the Tools menu and you should see something like this:

Hotmail Tools menu showing Rich-Text option

Note the option to turn the rich text editor on. Click on that, and you'll
see a new set of controls appear over the message body:

Hotmail Rich-Text editing tools

"... plain text has no formatting ..."

These are the tools that allow you to apply rich text formatting such as
bold, italics, font changes and so on to you email. If you click on the
Tools menu now, you'll see that it's changes:

Hotmail Tools menu showing Rich-Text Off option

Click on Rich-Text Editor OFF and you'll get a warning
about losing all your formatting (plain text has no formatting), and the rich
text toolbar will disappear, and any email you've composed will revert to plain
text.

But there's a catch.

If you run FireFox (and possibly other browsers), you may see this when you
click on the Tools menu:

Hotmail Tools menu in FireFox

You'll note that the "Rich-Text" option doesn't appear. You are apparently
stuck with plain text as your only option.

Do this

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6 comments on “How do I choose plain text in Hotmail?”

  1. well how do i send a message in this page ,well mine in hotmail because it choes that i have a message but i cant read it or i cant even send a message

    Reply
  2. —–BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE—–
    Hash: SHA1

    To the best of my knowledge, when last I went looking for it, Hotmail Live does
    not support plain text. No idea why.

    Leo

    —–BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE—–
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    iD8DBQFGrgW+CMEe9B/8oqERAnwMAJ9a9+4/hjTpIFMmO8uCxqMiKFauXgCeJvb5
    dc0gbxuKdUnKB9q0l/VLmKQ=
    =SqK+
    —–END PGP SIGNATURE—–

    Reply
  3. Hotmail live does have the option now.

    when writing an email, just below the subject box, there is a link saying: “Show plain text”

    Click on it and it will revert to plain text.

    Alas, I cant find an option within Hotmail Live to make it the default option.

    Reply
  4. —–BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE—–
    Hash: SHA1

    You don’t. The Hotmail page is what it is.

    Leo

    —–BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE—–
    Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (MingW32)

    iD8DBQFHimU+CMEe9B/8oqERAlN/AJ40OEqYguBkc6GlSCVRaCs2sEf9lwCcCd4d
    TCrjrOVgUftDgduF3aaPIVY=
    =+TfP
    —–END PGP SIGNATURE—–

    Reply

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